Completed kitchen

Completed kitchen
Originally uploaded by gelato.maker

Finally a place to call my own.

Angry house

Funny how I thought this place had everything I wanted. Close to work, MRT directly under the block, just outside the ERP gantry.

Since getting the keys, I have been making trips to peek at it after work before the contractors take a sledgehammer through the place. Every time I am downstairs, instead of feeling like I am coming home to my sanctuary, I feel agitated. The crowd downstairs, the smells the heat. So I decided to call it the angry house.

Today Bacteria Boy offered to help remove the butt ugly wardrobe with a circular saw and a crowbar. I think he had fun till he realized he had to slice a full sized wardrobe into 20cm strips so that it could fit into the rubbish chute. Heh

I really don't understand why interior designers and contractors are so reluctant to finish a floor with cement and forgo having tiles. I always liked the raw cement look. The excuses given are:

It will crack.

The house will lose value.

It will trap dirt.

It will not be waterproof.

It will get dusty.

My question is why is it that I am seeing so many cement floors in architecture books? How are they dealing with those issues?

What's wrong with having cement first and if it looks really bad later, I get to tile over and have 2 different floor experiences.

Oh yeah and there is always epoxy floor sealing.

Ok on a side note here are some links some frameless doors that I so love love love. Well not like I can afford them but a girl can dream can't she?

http://www.linvisibile.it/en/the-products/vertical-pivot-system/photo-gallery/;48

And here is another one by Porro

Chicken sandwich (home made)

Chicken sandwich
Originally uploaded by gelato.maker

Not one of my better food pictures but my excuse was I was already starving and had to buy ingredients and prep and eat before I passed out.

Brown some olive oil, white onions, capsicums and sear some chicken thighs with rosemary and parsley in a sandwich maker.

When chicken is cooked, put some olive oil and toast the inside of your bread with the sandwich maker.

Arrange your chicken, capcicums, soft golden brown onions, shred some coon cheese on top.

Add your top half of the bread and toast the outside of the sandwich.

Finally add some salt, yogurt, sliced tomatos and rocket salad.

Chili Crab Claw

Chili Crab Claw
Originally uploaded by gelato.maker

Had this at Bintan over the weekend. I would recommend the pepper crab instead but the chili crab looked prettier.

The sauce was not spicy enough for my liking but for those of you who find regular chili crabs too spicy, this might be for you. What I did like about the crabs were that they were not left sitting around suffering from mascular dystrophy and were meaty and filled their shells.

For some reason my d300 decided to die on me so all i was left with was the canon S70. After spending 2 hours packing all my camera gear, the camera decided to take a holiday too.

My Usual Breakfast

My Usual Breakfast
Originally uploaded by gelato.maker

This is my usual breakfast(oats with milk), today was extra  special because I had some leftover strawberries and blueberries from making a cake. Oats and raisins, oats and bananas, oats and milo, oats and green apple, they are all just as good and my day wouldn't start right without a cold bowl of soaked oats.

Wow I actually got around to posting on the blog again. Running the store took that much out of me that I really didn't have the energy for anything ice cream related for a while. It has been 3 months since ice queen shut down and my life seems to be starting to get back to normal again. No stressing over stocks, ingredients, new flavors, workers not being able to turn up for work. 

Okay thats enough of dipping my toe back into anything ice cream related for now. 

One of the hardest decisions

Of all the decisions I had to make, none was more difficult than the one I was faced with last week. We were torn between raising prices (something that we all felt so strongly against right from the start and fought tooth and nail against) and selling our last batch of gelato and bringing down the shutters at ice queen for good.

We priced our gelato to make everyone happy, but when we got feedback, we realized that people would be happier with a denser product, less air in the gelato. Stronger flavors, fresh fruit instead of paste, and we were happy to add as much as we could, because it gave us that much joy watching people appreciate the love that has gone into it. All the while never wanting to increase prices.

I didn't realize that our struggle to keep prices low from the start would cause that much unhappiness when we had to eventually adjust our prices so that we can continue this journey with our customers a while longer. 

So yes to all the people out there who might be reading, have yet to try, have tried and our regulars, I truly apologize for losing the tooth and nail fight.

Remembering that day....

Ice Queen on a stick
Originally uploaded by gelato.maker

As I was looking at the wonderful photos everyone has posted on their blog(BIG thanks people! for the lovely photos), I couldn't help but wonder how does one keep track of where all the photos were taken unless they spend some effort categorizing and adding tags and keywords. So this is what I came up with. TADA!!! 

Would love to get some feedback before I go ahead with this.